Metal Detecting Research - Useful Tips
Here you can find some useful tips and information on how to do a basic map research, "footwork" and other forms of research. Please feel free to submit your own practical tips and advices that could help others!
To do the best in treasure hunting, one has to know as much as possible about what he or she is trying to do. That means research. Without research, a treasure hunter cannot have enough facts to obtain good results and ends up doing the obvious, competing with others also doing the obvious - more effort, fewer and poorer finds.
A good site for detecting is an area that has been utilized by a few people over a long period of time, or an area that has been utilized by thousands over a brief period of time. Research, now more than ever, is critical for locating such good sites and having productive searches.
Out of many research methods used to find either a specific type of highly productive location or other not so obvious hunt sites, map research and footwork are the basic methods for locating metal detecting spots. The main focus of this article is on these two methods which are less time-consuming and simple - they would easily get you started.
Some enthusiasts might argue that these methods conceptualize the search for obvious, and partially it is true. But in some cases, the most productive sites are simply overlooked because everybody turned away from them, considering them the obvious and, therefore, "hammered out" spots. A few other types of research are explained on the following pages of this article.
How To Do a Basic Map Research
It is important to know how to read maps, including both old and new topographical maps, correctly. The principle of this type of map research is simple: to obtain as many old maps of the same area as possible and compare them to the modern topographic map. Sometimes finding an old map is challenging, especially in the case of the early Colonial maps called plats. But even if you lucky obtaining such a map, you still have to do a lot of work deciphering the map's symbolic content. Plats were not drawn to scale, and the detail you know and expect today was not present. Roads, terrain and land parcels were approximate at best.
The more less scaled US maps of the townships were issued for the first time in the mid-1800s. They were called "Beer's Maps" or "Beer's Atlases." Such maps can be obtained at the County library, State Archives, or downloaded from the Internet. Beer's maps do not show the terrain but contain many important pieces of information that can be useful for further research.
Used-to-be houses, now cellar holes, are marked by pink dots on the Beer's Map issued in 1854. Still-standing houses are marked by blue-green dots.
Besides giving location of the school houses and homesteads marked with their landowners' names, these maps correctly depicted roads, with distances between landmarks. At that time, the distances were measured in rods, also known as "poles" or "perches." 1 rod equals to 16.5 feet and was once known as a "quarter-chain."
A Gunter's Chain was a linked measuring device 66 feet long, including handles on both ends. It was invented in 1620 by Edmund Gunter, an English mathematician: all road and land measurements since his day were shown on maps in "chains" or their divisions (rods). Few know why a mile should be 5,280 feet long; but if you multiply a chain by 80, you will soon find out (80 x 66 = 5280).
Beer's maps are scaled 160 rods (or 1/2 mile to the inch) which makes it easier to measure distances and locate cellar holes on the ground. This might be crucial in the cases when the torrential rains changed the terrain dramatically, or dense vegetation has made the cellar holes invisible, thus making their discovery a difficult task for a treasure hunter.
The following map was issued seven years later, in 1861, and, for example, shows fewer houses on the upper road. That means that there would be no modern junk found around the remaining cellar holes and foundations of those houses. Also, older coins and relics could be found there.
And finally, here is the last Beer's map that was issued in 1875. It shows absence of one more house on the same segment of the upper road which had been extended further eastward with a new house built at its end.
After these maps have been compared, all remaining cellar holes and foundations, potential metal detecting sites, should be marked and transferred onto the modern topographical map. This map would be used for locating the cellar holes during the footwork on the ground.
The best topographical maps for treasure hunting purposes are those in the "seven-and-one-half-minute" series, with a scale of 1 to 24,000. Each of these maps covers an area of approximately 60 square miles. These maps can be obtained from the various sources including the U.S. Geological Survey.
As you can see, this simple map research yielded seven available hunt sites that are situated within a 1/2-mile distance on one road. Next step is to do some footwork and conduct busy treasure hunting.
Other types of maps that are helpful for your research: tax maps, fire insurance maps, military maps, railroad maps, canal maps, property deeds, census documents.
To Footwork Research on next page
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